Acathla
by secooper87
Summary: <html><head></head>Acathla learns not to match wits with Buffy Summers.</html>


Author's Note: Thanks everyone for your input. I think a lot of you are right; I should do this for me, to help me grow as an author and to help grow the characters outside of the boundaries of these superimposed universes. As I said, I'm still at the planning stages, though.

Anyways.

Happy Sukkot, everyone! I'm wiped after helping build a sukkah today. Plus I woke up at 3 am last night to watch the eclipse.

Have fun reading this chapter! I'm going to sleep.

Enjoy.

* * *

><p><em>Many centuries ago…<em>

"Buffy!" Angel screamed, writhing in his chains.

Acathla withdrew the magical energy, and Angel slumped.

"That name, again," said Acathla. "Always the same name. Like a prayer for salvation."

Angel didn't answer.

Acathla grabbed Angel by the jaw. "You think she will save you."

"She will."

Acathla squeezed, until the jaw broke. And Angel howled beneath his hands. Kept screaming for that name, even when his jaw was too shattered and broken to pronounce it.

_Buffy Anne Summers_.

Acathla had to wait a very, very long time… before he put a face to that name.

* * *

><p><em>Now…<em>

She waited until the demon got close.

Then used the chains to drag herself upwards, and kicked out. The demon overbalanced, and Buffy yanked at his tail — covered with impossibly sharp spikes, used for the torture — and slashed it across her chains.

The metal gave.

Tore.

And Buffy sprung herself across the demon's back.

Then raced forwards, towards the edge of the demon realm. She knew which areas she'd already checked. Which ones to double-check. She scrabbled at the rock walls, marking the end of this world. Trying to find a way out. Trying to find an exit!

She didn't, this time.

Not before Acathla caught her and dragged her back.

"You keep thinking you can escape," said Acathla. "That there's a way out."

Buffy went still, in his hands.

"You're here forever," Acathla told her. "Until the day you die. Eternal agony. Eternal torment. You must accept that."

"You've got something in your eye," said Buffy.

Acathla seemed confused. "What?"

"This!" shouted Buffy, punching him in the eye. He loosened his grip, and she managed to extract herself from his hold.

Then ran off to the next section of the rock wall, trying to find a way out of the hell dimension.

She found nothing.

But she'd never stop trying.

"I can be here years, and only a day will have passed, out there," Buffy reminded herself. "I have time. I can still rescue her."

So she kept trying. Kept escaping. Kept searching.

Two months in, Buffy finished searching the walls around the Hell Dimension.

And realized… there was no way out.

* * *

><p>"She isn't what I expected," Acathla mused, watching Buffy Summers enduring her eternal agony. "Her boyfriend was fun. He had so much hope and faith that we could crush. But this one…" He shook his head. "She doesn't even scream. She just… tries to escape."<p>

One of his demon minions bowed, respectfully. "Is there any way you could derive more enjoyment from her torment?"

Acathla thought.

For many long moments.

"She fights for something," Acathla decided. "Find out what. We will find it, too. And crush it."

* * *

><p>They wanted her savage.<p>

They wanted her like an animal.

They wanted her to claw and fight and kill to survive.

Buffy almost gave into it, once. Right at the beginning. When they pitted her in an arena, against a bunch of other creatures with souls. Some human, some alien. All in agony and torment.

The others rushed Buffy.

And she immediately went into Slayer mode, attacking and trying to destroy.

But she remembered Angel, when he'd first emerged from here. She recognized that feral hunger in the others. And stopped herself before she delivered the killing blow.

At first, she fought simply to escape her demon captors, and… when she was in the arena… in self-defense.

But eventually, Buffy stopped fighting with her fists.

And started fighting with her mind.

Whatever Elizabeth had implied, Buffy wasn't stupid. They wanted her feral and ravenous and hungry, here. They wanted her to lash out and kill and destroy without thinking twice. They wanted to shatter her every hope and dream and leave her with no humanity left.

She had to be smarter than that.

* * *

><p>Four months in, Acathla was starting to get annoyed with Buffy Summers.<p>

"What's wrong with her?" Acathla demanded of his demon minions. "You torture her, and she doesn't scream. You torment her, and she doesn't care! And… and… just look!"

He pointed down at the arena.

As Buffy played dead.

Then… just as the others were right on top of her, leaping over her body to get to the other ensouled arena members… Buffy would spring up.

Twisting around so she tackled them onto the ground, extracted their weapons, then struck them so they passed out. Until there was no one left to fight.

Ending the violence.

"She talks to them, afterwards," said one of the demon minions. "Trying to convince them to be people again. The more she does it, the calmer everyone gets."

Acathla was furious. "I don't want these creatures calm!" he shouted. "I want them all mindless, screaming animals. I want their pain and their misery!"

Another demon minion hurried over to him. "I've found it!" he cried. "I've found what Buffy Summers wants most of all!"

They all turned to the demon minion.

"She wants to rescue her child!"

* * *

><p>They kept dragging her in. Trying to goad her. Brainwash her. Trying to convince her that Seo was dead, that she couldn't rescue her, that it was already too late.<p>

Or that Seo didn't love her.

Or that Seo knew she was there, and was purposely keeping her there.

Buffy kept herself rational and calm throughout. Despite everything, she'd learned some mental tricks from her brief time mixing with Elizabeth, using the Crystallizer. Tricks Elizabeth had used to sooth the pounding in her head.

The tricks hadn't worked so well for Elizabeth.

But, turned out, they worked really well for drowning out Acathla's bullshit.

So Buffy remained calm. Composed.

She would get out of here. She would get back to Seo. Somehow or another, she'd make it back… and rescue her child from Elizabeth.

* * *

><p>Eight months.<p>

And Acathla had hit his limit.

"Most people in your situation are simply stubborn," Acathla said. "But not you. You just… don't care what we do! It doesn't matter to you."

Buffy didn't answer.

"I've had enough." Acathla turned to his demon minions. "Kill her."

"I can give you the Earth," Buffy offered, very calmly.

Acathla stopped the demon minions.

Scrutinized Buffy.

"I know that's what you want," Buffy said. "Back on Earth, you've got a statue of yourself that's actually a portal, connecting here to there. That portal almost opened, when I was a girl. I was the one who stopped it."

Acathla nodded, bitterly. "I know."

"But I've grown up since then," said Buffy. Stepping forwards. "I've been to outer space. Seen other worlds and other times and other places. Earth is so… small. So insignificant. Compared to what's out there!"

Acathla was intrigued. "You'd be willing to give it up, now?"

"In exchange for one thing," Buffy replied. Her eyes met his. "My daughter's safety."

All the demons in the hall began to laugh maniacally at this.

"You'd give up your world for your child!" they cried.

Buffy shrugged.

They'd never been mothers.

They wouldn't understand.

"And how do you think you can achieve this?" Acathla asked. "I've been trying for eons. But the barrier between this realm and Earth is unbreachable."

Buffy reached into her pocket.

And placed a small ring in Acathla's hands.

"Angel gave this back to me," she said, "last time I went to LA, with my daughter. He said it proved that, even if we were no longer intimate… he and I would always be the closest of friends. No matter what."

More snickers, from the demon minions.

"And how's a ring supposed to help us?" Acathla said. "I told you. Nothing has breached the barrier between my realm and Earth."

"Nothing except this," said Buffy. The ring sparkled as it caught the torchlight. "It's the exact same ring that plucked Angel out of your hell and brought him back to Earth."

The snickers died down.

Silence reigned through Acathla's realm.

"It's not working now," said Buffy. "But I'm guessing… if you used some of that magic of yours… you could tap into the energies it used before. Reactivate and expand those energies. Use this thing to break through the barrier and take over Earth."

Acathla looked down at it.

His face breaking into a toothy, demonic grin.

"Yes," he realized. "She's right!" He cackled at Buffy, as he clenched his fist around the ring. "You, human, have just doomed your world!"

"And saved my daughter," said Buffy. She crossed her arms. "I won't regret that. Not ever."

* * *

><p>Acathla began the ceremony.<p>

His every word of power instilling the ring with a kind of ethereal glow. The metal almost wiggled and wobbled, as the dimensional energy inside it was finally raised from dormancy.

The ring shimmered with ethereal power that entranced every demon there.

Acathla watching, with glee, as the portal began to open.

"One more thing," said Buffy. Faster than anyone could register, she grabbed up a sword from one of the entranced demon minions.

Acathla turned his head, but too slow… too absorbed with focusing the energy needed to construct that portal and re-energize the ring…

His head was hacked off.

Rolled along the ground. Eyes still open. But lifeless.

"I always win," Buffy said.

The other demons broke free from their trance. Began to scream, surging for Buffy.

Buffy grabbed the ring in the center of the circle… felt its glow encompass her, as she shimmered and faded out from Acathla's dimension…

* * *

><p>The ring didn't take Buffy home.<p>

She arrived, instead, in another hell. Her ring now lifeless, the glow gone, the metal reduced to mere jewelry once more. This place was red and bleak, dusty and dim, with burned out twisting spires of houses and burned out purple trees, the streams full of fire and the air ringing with the cries of tortured souls.

Buffy soon found it a hell filled with Frictzor Demons. Who rejoiced in torturing and breaking down any ensouled creature who happened upon them.

Buffy was the only one, here, who even _looked_ human.

"Must have taken me further away from home," Buffy muttered, looking down at the ring on her finger, as she marched with the other ensouled creatures, towards their next torment. "Not closer."

The ring flickered with a faint light.

Then died back down into nothing.

Buffy looked around herself. Wondering if maybe… the ring wasn't completely dead after all. What if there was one entry point and one exit point, in every place she landed, for this ring to latch onto, and it only activated at those exact coordinates?

There were demons all around.

Making a break for it was risky. But Buffy needed to take that risk.

She broke through her chains, then sprinted — fast as she could — for the spot where the ring had flickered. She dodged and darted, flipping and flying through the air as she went, trying to find the spot where the ring lit up the most.

She transported out of that realm in mid-flip.

And landed in another world.

Another Hell.

* * *

><p>It was like that. Buffy didn't know for how long. Fighting her way through hell dimensions, until she found the correct point in space and time for the ring to activate.<p>

Then she'd be off to the next Hell Dimension.

To fight her way through that one.

Elizabeth had stolen her daughter. Stolen her life. Stolen her world and her universe. And sentenced Buffy to endless dimensions of hell.

But Buffy knew — Elizabeth couldn't win.

Buffy would never let that happen.

"I'm coming, Seo," Buffy said, racing through her latest hell dimension, trying to get her ring to activate. "Even if it takes me a hundred years, and I'm old and gray and wrinkled. I'll come back home, grab a time machine and a wheelchair and a granny dress, and rescue you."

The ring glowed.

"I promise," Buffy said.

As she transported to another hell.


End file.
